Housing repairs and maintenance contractor Mears Group is now using the Probrand Marketplace for all of its IT procurement.
Mears had been working with a single supplier of IT hardware and software for several years and although Mears’ procurement team wasn’t dissatisfied with the relationship, it wanted to challenge the status quo and assess its options.
Claire Wilkinson, head of service delivery, Mears Group, said, “We had been sticking to what we knew for some time and we wanted to look at the situation with a fresh pair of eyes. What we quickly realised was that a better alternative was available.”
Mears discovered that they could guarantee low margins and therefore better prices for IT hardware and software by buying products and services through the Probrand Marketplace.
The Probrand Marketplace saves users time and money when procuring IT by offering price comparisons on products from multiple suppliers. Mears now has access to more than 300,000 products from 2,500 brands. All prices and stock levels are updated by-the-minute in a real-time, transparent environment, with technical experts on hand to support buying decisions if needed.
Wilkinson said, “With our previous supplier, we wouldn’t know if an item had been delivered because there was little or no communication. We’d only find out when our own customer contacted us. We would then find ourselves in a situation where we were being told that the product was out of stock or that we’d have to wait two weeks.
“The experience is a big improvement on what we had before; the Probrand Marketplace is like a business version of Amazon, but better. They let us know who has signed for the product and when. The whole administrative process is a lot simpler too and it enables us to get products to customers much faster.
“We sometimes check to see if we can buy things cheaper elsewhere but this is rarely the case. We are making savings every day; it might be £10 on a monitor or £150 on a software licence. When you add up all these day-to-day savings, it makes a huge difference.”
